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Zaira (opera)
''Zaira'' is a ''tragedia lirica'', or tragic opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini set to a libretto by Felice Romani which was based on Voltaire's 1732 play, '' Zaïre''. The story takes place in the time of the Crusades and the opera's plot involves the heroine, Zaira, struggling between her Christian faith and her love for Orosmane, the Muslim Sultan of Jerusalem. It was Bellini's fifth opera, following quickly after his February 1829 composition and premiere of '' La straniera'' at La Scala. ''Zaira'' received its first performance at the "Nuovo Teatro Ducale" in Parma (now the Teatro Regio di Parma) on 16 May 1829.Kimbell, in Holden, p. 49 Although it had been expressly written for the theatre's inauguration, it was a failure at its premiere. Composition history At around the time that Bellini was in discussions with impresario Domenico Barbaja about a second opera for La Scala to follow '' La straniera'', the composer reported to his friend Francesco Florimo in N ...
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Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (; ; 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer famed for his long, graceful melodies and evocative musical settings. A central figure of the era, he was admired not only by the public, but also by many composers who were influenced by his work. His songs balanced florid Ornament (music), embellishment with a deceptively simple approach to lyric setting. Born to a musical family in Sicily, he distinguished himself early and earned a scholarship to study under several noted musicians at Music conservatories of Naples#Conservatorio di San Sebastiano, Naples' Real Collegio di Musica. There he absorbed elements of the Neapolitan School's style and was inspired by performances of Donizetti's and Rossini's operas, among others, in more modern idioms. He wrote his first opera, ''Adelson e Salvini'' (1825), for the conservatory, and his next, ''Bianca e Fernando'' (1826), on a Teatro di San Carlo-affiliated commiss ...
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Domenico Barbaja
Domenico Barbaia (also spelled Barbaja; 10 August 1777 – 19 October 1841) was best known as an opera Italian impresario. An energetic man, Barbaia, who was born in Milan, began his career by running a coffee shop. He made his first fortune by creating (or at least taking the credit for creating) a special kind of coffee with frothing milk, the " Barbajada", probably the first "cappuccino." This drink, and a variation with hot chocolate like Bicerin, became so popular in Milan that the erstwhile waiter was able to open a string of coffee houses in the city that all featured his novel concoction. Barbaia made his second fortune by buying and selling munitions during the Napoleonic wars. Also, after the French re-allowed gambling as they advanced southwards in Italy, he became involved in the operations as a card dealer at the La Scala opera house, but quickly achieved the position of sub-contractor to run the entire gaming operation of the house in 1805. With his eyes on cont ...
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Giorgio Lamberti (tenor)
Giorgio Lamberti (born July 9, 1938) is an Italian operatic tenor. He made his professional debut at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in 1964 as Henri in ''Les vêpres siciliennes''. He returned to that theatre the following year to star in the world premiere of Mario Zafred’s ''Wallenstein''. In 1965 he made his American debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago as Radames in Giuseppe Verdi's ''Aida''. In 1974 he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Cavaradossi in ''Tosca'', and in 1979 he gave his first performance at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in the title role of ''Don Carlos''. He has sung leading roles internationally at such theaters as La Scala, the Berlin State Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opera, the Teatro Colón and the Zürich Opera Zurich Opera (Opernhaus Zürich) is a Swiss opera company based in Zurich. The company gives performances in the Zurich Opera House. History The first performance at the current theatre occurred on 30 September 1891, ...
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Renata Scotto
Renata Scotto (24 February 1934 – 16 August 2023) was an Italian soprano, opera director, and voice teacher. Recognised for her sense of style, her musicality, and as a remarkable singer-actress, Scotto is considered to have been one of the preeminent opera singers of her generation. For more than 40 years, she performed in some 45 roles, first in Italy, then as a leading soprano of the Metropolitan Opera (Met). She is remembered especially for the title roles of Verdi's ''La traviata'', performed for her stage debut in Milan in 1952, and Puccini's ''Madama Butterfly'', which was her first role at the Met and her last there in 1987, but also for belcanto works such as Donizetti's ''Lucia di Lammermoor''. She appeared in the first telecast from the Met in 1977, as Mimi in Puccini's ''La bohème'', alongside Luciano Pavarotti and conducted by James Levine. She later expanded her repertoire by roles such as the Marschallin in ''Der Rosenkavalier'' by Richard Strauss, Elle in Poule ...
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Teatro Massimo Bellini
The Teatro Massimo Bellini is an opera house located on Piazza Vincenzo Bellini in Catania, Sicily, southern Italy. Named after the local-born composer Vincenzo Bellini, it was inaugurated on 31 May 1890 with a performance of the composer's masterwork, ''Norma''. It seats 1,200. History The creation of what was to finally become the Teatro Massimo Bellini took almost two hundred years, beginning with discussions following the disastrous 1693 earthquake which completely destroyed Catania. The construction of a public theatre was discussed, and a foundation stone was finally laid in 1812. Architect Salvatore Zahra Buda began to prepare a plan for a theatre in the Piazza Nuovaluce, in front of the Santa Maria di Nuovaluce monastery, the location of the present-day theatre. It was decided that a "Great Municipal Theatre" worthy of an expanding city should be created; the plan of the "Teatro Nuovaluce" (New Light Theatre) was a grandiose one in all respects, and was conceived ...
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I Capuleti E I Montecchi
''I Capuleti e i Montecchi'' (''The Capulets and the Montagues'') is an Italian opera (''tragedia lirica'') in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini. The libretto by Felice Romani was a reworking of the story of ''Romeo and Juliet'' for an opera by Nicola Vaccai called ''Giulietta e Romeo (Vaccai), Giulietta e Romeo'' and based on the play of the same name by Luigi Scevola written in 1818, thus an Italian source rather than taken directly from William Shakespeare. Bellini was persuaded to write the opera for the 1830 Carnival of Venice, Carnival season at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, with only a month and a half available for composition. He succeeded by appropriating a large amount of music previously written for his unsuccessful opera ''Zaira (opera), Zaira''. The first performance of ''I Capuleti e i Montecchi'' took place on 11 March 1830. Composition history After ''Zaira'' Following the poor reception which ''Zaira'' received in Parma, Bellini returned to Milan by the end of ...
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Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. He gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces and some Church music, sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of twelve and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823, he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an alm ...
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Friedrich Lippmann (musicologist)
Friedrich Lippmann (July 25, 1932, Dessau - 9 March 2019, Bonn) was a German musicologist who was considered an authority on 18th and 19th century Italian opera. He studied philosophy and German at the Free University of Berlin from 1951 through 1953. He then studied musicology with Adam Adrio at Humboldt University of Berlin from 1953 through 1956, and then with Friedrich Blume and Anna Amalie Abert at the University of Kiel where he earned his doctorate in 1962. He then worked as a research fellow at the Haydn Institute in Cologne from 1962 through 1964. From 1964 through 1996 he was chair of the music history department at the German Historical Institute in Rome. He published authoritative works on  Johann Adolf Hasse and Vincenzo Bellini and was both a contributor and editor of several academic journals; including editor of ''Analecta musicologica'' and '' Concertus musicus''. His scholoarship on opera was appreciated with a Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; pl ...
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Teatro Regio Parma Apertura
Teatro may refer to: * Theatre * Teatro (band) Teatro, Italian for "theatre", is a vocal group signed to the Sony BMG music label. The members of Teatro are Jeremiah James, Andrew Alexander, Simon Bailey and Stephen Rahman-Hughes. Band members Jeremiah James Jeremiah James was born in up ..., musical act signed to Sony BMG * ''Teatro'' (Willie Nelson album), 1998 * ''Teatro'' (Draco Rosa album), 2008 {{disambiguation ...
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Zaïre
Zaire, officially the Republic of Zaire, was the name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1971 to 18 May 1997. Located in Central Africa, it was, by area, the third-largest country in Africa after Sudan and Algeria, and the 11th-largest country in the world from 1965 to 1991. With a population of over 23 million, Zaire was the most populous Francophone country in Africa. Zaire was strategically important to the West during the Cold War, particularly the U.S., as a counterbalance to Soviet influence in Africa. The U.S. and its allies supported the Mobutu regime (1965–1997) with military and economic aid to prevent the spread of communism. The country was a one-party totalitarian military dictatorship, run by Mobutu Sese Seko and his Popular Movement of the Revolution. Zaire was established following Mobutu's seizure of power in a military coup in 1965, after five years of political upheaval following independence from Belgium known as the Congo Crisis. Zaire had ...
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Le Comte Ory
''Le comte Ory'' (''Count Ory'') is a comic opera written by Gioachino Rossini in 1828. Some of the music originates from his opera ''Il viaggio a Reims'' written three years earlier for the coronation of Charles X. The French libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson adapted from a comedy they had first written in 1817. The work is ostensibly a comic opera in that the story is humorous, even farcical. However, it was devised for the Opéra rather than for the Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique and there are structural inconsistencies with the contemporary ''opéra comique'' genre: whereas the latter consists of relatively short lyrical numbers and spoken dialogue, ''Le comte Ory'' consists of "highly developed, even massive musical forms linked by accompanied recitative". Although the opera contains some of Rossini's most colorful orchestral writing, the quaint, brief overture is oddly restrained and unassuming, ending with a whisper of pizzicato strings. ...
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Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. He gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of twelve and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823, he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as ...
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